December 2020 Black Hills Adventure Day 1

By Jacob

Welcome to the first blog of 2021! In December we had an opportunity to go up to South Dakota’s beautiful Black Hills as part of a college visit. This was a trip that was sort of put together at the last minute, only three weeks in advance of departure. We have two full days in South Dakota to explore the Black Hills. We have visited this area in the past and were looking forward to visiting again, as well as places we had not visited before in the area.

Because of our schedule we departed the Kansas City Area around 2:00 p.m. That night we were going to stay in Oacoma, South Dakota, just west of the Missouri River along I-90. From Kansas City, Oacoma is around seven hours and nineteen minutes by car, 502 miles away. We headed along the Missouri Valley and up into Iowa. We did not stop until we were just a couple of miles south of Sioux City along I-29 to fill up on gas and stop at the bathroom.

By this point we are starting to get hungry and one of our favorite pizza places, MacKenzie River Pizza Company, has a location in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Sioux Falls is also the location of our first attraction of the trip. We headed up to Sioux Falls along I-29 getting hungrier by the second. It is dark by this point so not much to look at. I felt like I was checking Google Maps every few minutes and checking our ETA. We finally reach our destination and find the pizza place. We check in and the wait is 50 minutes. It was a Friday night after all so this was not unexpected. We decided to go get some gas while we waited, keep in mind that by this point, we were all VERY hangry with quickly decreasing patience. Of course the first gas station we go to, all the pumps are not working (sigh). We found another gas station where you can actually get gas and filled up. While at the gas station we decided that we should just eat at the local Five Guys. It would take us forever to eat and we still had a two hour drive to Oacoma ahead of us. I coined the term “de-escalate” in the context of we need to eat before we kill each other.

We ate at Five Guys and then headed to our first attraction of the trip. The waterfalls at Falls Park, just north of downtown. During the holiday season Falls Park puts up over 350,000 Christmas lights around the trees and buildings of the park. The waterfalls are also lit up in red and green. The park was beautiful, but crowded. It was basically a drive-thru looking at all the beautiful lights. We had lost hope that we were going to get a parking spot to see the falls but were enjoying all the scenery. At the last moment on the north side of the park, we found an open parking lot and parked. We got out of the car and walked to a bridge just downriver from the waterfalls and got some good pictures.

queen beds. The woman then said “well...unfortunately…” and then just cut off. She gave us our room keys and we went up to our room. One thing to note is that this hotel does not have an elevator. We do not know what the lady was about to tell us after “unfortunately…”, but it became a running joke for the rest of the trip. We then dozed off to sleep anticipating our next day of adventure.